Friedrich Nietzsche's Controversy

Nietzsche was a revolutionary author and philosopher who has had a tremendous impact on German culture up through the twentieth century and even today. Nietzsche's views were very unlike the popular and conventional beliefs and practices of his time and nearly all of his published works were, and still are, rather controversial, especially in On the Genealogy of Morals. His philosophies are more than just controversial and unconventional viewpoints, however; they are absolutely extreme and dangerous if taken out of context or misinterpreted. After Nietzsche's death it took very little for his sister to make some slight alterations to his works to go along with Nazi ideology.

Nietzsche is widely known as a critic of religion. In fact, he talks in depth about morality in regards to religion in his essays about the genealogy of morals. But the problem is not within religion itself or within morals. The problem is involved in the combination of the two to create society’s understanding of morality through a very religious lens. In fact, Nietzsche has criticism for almost any set of morals constructed by a group of individuals and meant to be applied to society as a whole. True morality, according to Nietzsche, requires a separation from these group dynamic views of morality- or at least a sincere look into where they originated and why they persist- and a movement towards a more introverted, and intrinsically personalized understanding of what morals mean in spite of the fact that “the normative force to which every member of society is exposed, in the form of obligations, codes of behavior, and other moral rules and guidelines, is disproportionally high” (Korfmacher 6).

Friedrich Nietzsche’s own skepticism symbolized the secular changes in contemporary Western civilization, in which he details mankind’s break away from faith into a new rule of chaos. In Book 5 of The Gay Science, Nietzsche establishes that “God is dead”, meaning that modern Europe has abandoned religion in favor of rationality and science (Nietzsche 279). From this death, the birth of a ‘new’ infinite blossoms in which the world is open to an unlimited amount of interpretations that do not rely on the solid foundations of faith in religion or science. However, in contrast to the other philosophers of his age such as Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Nietzsche deviates from the omniscient determinism of history towards a

Friedrich Nietzsche was part of large family. His father’s name was Carl Ludwig Nietzsche. Carl Nietzsche was a religious man and was the preacher of a Lutheran church. His mother’s name was Franziska Oehler. Friedrich Nietzsche also had a sister and a brother. His sister’s name was Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, and his brother’s name was Ludwig Joseph. At age five, Friedrich Nietzsche’s family life changed. His father passed away due to brain problem. The year after his father’s death, Ludwig Joseph the brother passed away. After the loss of his two family members, Friedrich Nietzsche, his mother, and sister moved in with their grandmother. The loss of his love ones was a very trying time for Friedrich Nietzsche, and their deaths caused Nietzsche to question his beliefs

Christianity had become the enemy of life and nature and the church has stifled its followers by turning them into closed minded and weak humans. Nietzsche ultimately believed that religion creates a concept of anti-natural morality which damages our development as humans quite

“As soon as a religion comes to dominate it has as its opponents all those who would have been its first disciples.” Nietzsche was one of the first modern philosophers to rebel against rationalism and when World War I came about, the revolution against religion truly became a legitimate statement. Friedrich Nietzsche strongly believed that many of those that practiced religion were led to the acceptance of slave morality. Religion had always played a fundamental role in society as it sets strict boundaries and standards of what is morally correct and incorrect. However, Nietzsche claims that, “Human nature is always driven by “ ‘the will to power’ ”, but religion will tell one otherwise, saying that one should forbid their bad desires. In Nietzsche’s

Religion has been subject to various examinations throughout time; this historically dominant concept has offered much to the world, while sometimes being disadvantageous. Philosophers have looked to offer insight and understanding to the idea of a higher power, aiming to try and grasp its complex nature. Friedrich Nietzsche a 19th century philosopher takes a different approach to the idea of religion in his literary narrative “The Gay Science”. In this narrative Nietzsche makes the bold statement that “God is Dead” (Nietzsche 95), claiming that we have all killed him. This is rather extreme statement in any context, however considering the time period in which he was writing, a time

Ever since the inception of his writings, Nietzsche has been pointed to and predominately described as an atheist, however within the work, Beyond Good and Evil, it is revealed otherwise. Nietzsche considers several different roles for religion in past, present, and future polities. The roles that religion play within Nietzsche’s vision of a future creation and establishment of world-affirming values is dependent upon the class of the individual. It is found in the various sections of The religious character within Beyond Good and Evil, that religion can be utilized by different classes of people for different world affirmations. The high ranking officials are able to use religion as a tool to relate and control their subjects, while the middle

While Nietzsche’s standpoint of the master morality can be viewed in the lifestyle of people today, it is not a morality that need be accepted or strived for as a sense of power or accomplishment in life. The Bible teaches that as we lose our live for Jesus we will find it (Matthew 10:39). Submitting to God is not an act of weakness, rather an honor and gain as we lose ourselves in Him and find our true selves. The Bible says that we were made in God’s image and likeness, and we were given dominion over the earth (Genesis 1:26). Nietzsche’s master morality appears to be just that, an attempt to gain dominion. Since Nietzsche did not believe in God, which is the way to salvation and eternal life (Romans 10:9), it is safe to assume that he was serving the god of this world and his ways, which have always been to try to copy or be like God (Isaiah 14:13-14). Nietzsche had knowledge about God but decided to turn away from him. Because of this, Romans 1:28 -29 shows that he, among other things would be arrogant, boastful heartless, and invent ways of doing evil, which to me is exactly what his whole master-slave morality portrays. Had Nietzsche just turned from his wicked ways and submitted to the One and only true God, he would have found the peace, love, and true authority with out death.

Friedrich Nietzsche unquestionably serves as a model for the single best pundit of religion. At the flip side of this range, Jonathan Edwards develops as his archrival regarding religious talk. Nietzsche contends that Christianity's stance to all that is exotic is that grounded in danger, out to manageable all that rests on nature, or is characteristic, much the same as Nietzsche's position on the planet and his perspectives. Considering this current, Edwards' perspectives on Christianity ought to be seen in setting focused at the individuals who concur with his thought, that G-d is incredible and past the limit of human reason.

Nietzsche lived his life as a man critical of nearly everything in his life, provided that in influenced morality. Religion influenced people who, in his eyes, could do greater if their ideals weren’t held back by their preconceived ideas of morality. He frequently attacked philosophies that disagreed with him, claiming that they stood in the way of the benefit of mankind. His belief of abandoning preconceived notions of a code of morality is his own philosophy, Nihilism. Everything Nietzsche worked on became Nihilism. It is a shame that Nietzsche fell out of contemporary view because of the edits made by his sister that caused people to associate him with the hateful views of nazism and

In Friedrich Nietzsche’s novel, The Gay Science, he discusses the death of God or more explicitly, “…the belief in the Christian God has become unbelievable” (Nietzsche 199). What people believed was true years ago is now false. He questions whether our concept of God is our oldest lie. He pronounces that he and certain other people are free spirits, children of the future, and argonauts of the ideal. What Nietzsche means by this is that he and certain other people have the capability to be free from high moral standards produced by religion.

If we broadly understand metaphysics to be the inquiry concerning how reality is in itself, then we find in the work of Nietzsche two different levels of discourse regarding his opinion of metaphysics. On one level, we find the Nietzsche that we all know, the staunch opposer of metaphysics as Platonism who greatly influenced later thinkers such as Martin Heidegger and Jean-Luc Marion. However, on another level, there is a Nietzsche who is completely at ease in employing this term in a positive way. This, is particularly clear in the light of Nietzsche’s first publication, The Birth of Tragedy. Heavily influenced by figures such as Schopenhauer and Wagner, in this text Nietzsche avails himself of

Friedrich Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher and held in regard amongst the greatest philosophers of the early part century. He sharpened his philosophical skills through reading the works of the earlier philosophers of the 18th century such as Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, Arthur Schopenhauer and African Spir; however, their works and beliefs were opposite to his own. His primary mentor was Author Schopenhauer, whose belief was that reality was built on the foundation of experience. Such as it is, one of his essays, Schopenhauer als Erzieher, published in 1874, was dedicated to Schopenhauer (Mencken, 2008). In the past two centuries, his work has had authority and influence in both

3). In his most basic claims, Nietzsche implicitly negates the possibility of a “disinterested” or “objective” truth. He would not urge so definitively for an affirmation of reality, if he held out for the possibility of fantasy or god. The ‘innocence of becoming’ is a clear example of how Nietzsche, for all intents and purposes, “debunk[‘s]” the relevance of claims made by traditional authorities. In essence, Nietzsche basically nullifies the relevance of societal hierarchy. Not only this, but the further claims made by such a society regarding morality and philosophical thinking, are seen to be – at best – gullible and naïve. The ‘innocence of becoming’ refers to even the lowest classes of society finding power in their status. In lieu of accepting that we are completely alone in the world, Nietzsche asserts that we have a constant need to blame others for our state. It is simply much easier to do than to accept that everything we do has no genuine or reaching consequences. While the ‘innocence of becoming’ is not necessarily an innocent process as those we choose to blame are usually blameless, it is fair to say that we are innocent of it; much like the ‘will to power’ it also works through self-deception. Evidently we are able to commit to life affirmation by essentially taking no responsibility for our weakness. Christianity itself is closely connected with the ‘becoming’ process as in its